Koji Igarashi

Japanese video game designer

Koji Igarashi (五十嵐 孝司) is a Japanese video game producer, programmer, writer, and creative director. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. Often credited as IGA, he began his career by joining Konami in 1990 as a programmer. Over the next ten years, he moved into a senior role within the company, working on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as a programmer, writer, and assistant director. He later served as the lead producer on the Castlevania series, starting with Castlevania Chronicles in 1999 and ending with Castlevania: Harmony of Despair in 2011. During his time with Konami, he was also involved in other titles, such as Nano Breaker and Tokimeki Memorial. In 2014, Igarashi left Konami to later become the co founder of Artplay who in June 2019 released Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series.

Koji Igarashi was born in the Fukushima Prefecture on March 17, 1968. His father was a lumberjack. Igarashi had an interest in becoming a carpenter and later to be an artist. His first project was working as a programmer for a simulation game for the Educational Software department. The game would be a business simulation, and the team took inspiration from the Fire Emblem series, but after 12 months the game was cancelled. He worked as a programmer and was tasked with writing the story for Tokimeki Memorial, a dating sim for the PC Engine's Super CD ROM² System. Igarashi began working on a Castlevania game set for the Sega 32X. However, the game was cancelled as Konami shifted its focus away from the unsuccessful 32X and towards the PlayStation. Igarashi's next project was the PlayStation game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, where he worked on scenario writing and programming. Halfway through the game's production, director Toru Hagihara received a company promotion, which promoted Igarashi to assistant director to complete the game. The game was well received critically, later serving as an influence on the "Metroidvania" genre, though it did not translate into strong sales. Igarashi says that he was motivated to create the game because he had played other heavy story driven games and after a long break had lost motivation to continue. He says he wanted to make a game that could be played at any time, and could feel fresh every time you played it. He wanted each player to have their own unique experience when playing the game. Following that, Igarashi served as the producer for Castlevania Chronicles, which was a PlayStation port of a 1993 Sharp X68000 game. This included bringing back artist Ayami Kojima as character designer, who had previously worked on Symphony of the Night. Igarashi felt that the previous title, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, was too dark on the Game Boy Advance's screen, so he felt the need to make the game brighter. In March 2007, writer Warren Ellis announced that he was working on a straight to DVD animated film adaption of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse along with Koji Igarashi. Ellis explained how he worked with Igarashi to fit the film into the timeline of the series, including writing a new backstory, and how Igarashi required a full eight re writes of pre production material. After languishing in development hell for years, the project, titled Castlevania, was released on Netflix in 2017. At the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, Igarashi showcased a teaser was for an upcoming game starring Alucard, which was slated for release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Igarashi would later note that despite a lot of time and money had been spent on the project, development had not been going smoothly. Konami's business model had shifted more towards mobile game development. While there, Igarashi had tried to develop mobile games that played more like console games, but was unable to release any titles. He left Konami in March 2014. Out of the Castlevania games he has worked on, Igarashi says that Symphony of the Night is his favorite, and out of the overall series, he cites Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, giving the sound quality and world setting as reasons for liking it the most. His other favorite Castlevania game is Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, because of the change it introduced to the series.

Igarashi attempted and failed to find a publisher funding a new console game. A Chinese businessman, Mr. Feng Gang, acts as CEO and Igarashi acts as chief producer. The goal of the company is to be both a mobile and console game company, with profits from mobile games leading to development of console games, and the console games will spawn mobile spinoffs. Drawing inspiration in Keiji Inafune, who had left Capcom to form his own studio and launch his new game Mighty No. 9 via crowd sourcing, Igarashi decided to launch his own Kickstarter campaign for his new project. It eventually raised US$5.5 million, making it the most successful video game on the Kickstarter platform until Shenmue III broke this record about two months later. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was released on multiple platforms in June 2019 and received favorable reviews. Alongside Bloodstained, ArtPlay also announced in 2015 the mobile game Code S Plan. Revolve8: Episodic Duelling, a player versus player real time strategy mobile game, was released in February 2019 on iOS and Android.